“When you listened to him describe it you gulped," said Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York.

As Senator Christopher J. Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut and chairman of the Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, put it Friday morning on the ABC program “Good Morning America,” the congressional leaders were told “that we’re literally maybe days away from a complete meltdown of our financial system, with all the implications here at home and globally.”

Mr. Schumer added, “History was sort of hanging over it, like this was a moment.”

When Mr. Schumer described the meeting as “somber,” Mr. Dodd cut in. “Somber doesn’t begin to justify the words,” he said. “We have never heard language like this.”

“What you heard last evening,” he added, “is one of those rare moments, certainly rare in my experience here, is Democrats and Republicans deciding we need to work together quickly.”

Although Mr. Schumer, Mr. Dodd and other participants declined to repeat precisely what they were told by Mr. Bernanke and Mr. Paulson, they said the two men described the financial system as effectively bound in a knot that was being pulled tighter and tighter by the day.

“You have the credit lines in America, which are the lifeblood of the economy, frozen.” Mr. Schumer said. “That hasn’t happened before. It’s a brave new world. You are in uncharted territory, but the one thing you do know is you can’t leave them frozen or the economy will just head south at a rapid rate.”

As he spoke, Mr. Schumer swooped his hand, to make the gesture of a plummeting bird. “You know we’d be lucky ...” he said as his voice trailed off. “Well, I’ll leave it at that.”

I wonder if that bi-partisanship will last through the Sunday talk shows.

The problem really is that all thes financial operations have credit instruments on their books and they now don't have a good idea of the value because the rating services were asleep. Since they don't know the value, they are afraid to make any transactions that will lower their own liquidity.

I'm still not clear on one big issue. I know this new RTC2 will be buying up bonds (e.g. bundles of mortgages). I assume the riskest bonds. this appears to allow the banks to keep the good profitable bonds and unload their mistakes on the Feds.

I HOPE that the FEDS are not paying face value for these bonds. In RTC1, the FEDS didn't lose as much money because they were able to sell assets over time that they had acquired at a discount. Hopefully the same will occur here, which both lowers the bailout costs to the taxpayers and shifts some of the losses to the dumb f_cks who should have known better.

Sen. Christopher Dodd, the Democratic chairman of the Senate banking committee, has the gall to say in a Bloomberg Television interview: "I have a lot of questions about where was the administration over the last eight years." ... Dodd — who along with Democratic Sens. John Kerry, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton were the top four recipients of Fannie and Freddie campaign contributions from 1988 to 2008 — actively opposed such measures and further weakened existing regulation.

The surprise is the media is surprised at Dodd's feigned surprise.

Dodd is an unusually venal partisan who is profiting from the disasters of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Many other Democrats have and are profiting too, including Obama.

On the drill sgt's point, I don't know that anyone knows the value of those trillions of dollars of derivitives. Not the banks, the ratings agencies, or the government. The underlying problem with this whole fiasco is risk is difficult to assess.

The banks did what businesses normally do when they have risk - they insured it. But when everyone goes down at once insurance is worthless.

The financial programs I listen to on the Internet (the networks/cable stink) have been discussing the coming crisis for the last 2 years, constantly commenting that it will take something cataclysmic to finally get people to wake up.

Well guess what, the perfect storm has hit.

The basis of this economy is no longer manufacturing or service but rather financial and speculation is that New York will begin to lose its status as the worlds financial center to emerging Dubai.....

Fortunes come and fortunes go. It would please me to no end to see thousands of those quickly-made fortunes evaporate faster than they accumulated, instantly would be satisfying. It would please me more to see a stacks heads tumbling gruesomely down the sides of stone pyramids, but that's even less likely. That these bankers get to skate annoys me to no end,while the rest of us, the world, in fact, are left with currencies diminished in value.

BDS sufferers have another item to catalog and to tick off while reciting their index of grievances as they impress with their astute sociopolitical acumen, bending ears at lunch dates and cocktail parties. Presidential historians with broader, clearer, more comprehensive vision have an entirely new chapter to be written.

My own portfolio appears to be mostly intact and for that I am thankful, smaller, a bit shaken, and not worth what it should be when translated back into spendable cash, but at least it's still there. Let's express this graphically, I'm left with a feeling the rug has just been snapped out from under me by ten thousand inept magicians, all gone off all at once escaped whose backs can still be seen in the distance, skis dangling from the lift. It's similar to the felling whenever we moved, in my mind it was always forced and so I don't have control, except this time I'm still in the exact same place, zackly the same place 'cept diff'ernt.

You think you were scared. I was living this waking nightmare all last week, trying to hold my client's hands and keep them from committing seppuku.

In reality this has been coming for several years and has been readily apparent to all of us in the industry. However, the speed with which the house of cards started to tumble in the last few weeks was shocking. The ripple effect that would have happened when MMKT funds started breaking the buck would have been world wide and disastrous.

You have no idea the bullet we just dodged. The idea of government taking over private industry doesn't sit well at all with me. It reeks of communism and I'm afraid it has set a very very bad precedent. The consequences of letting the world wide banking, financial and credit systems collapse....I can't begin to tell you how bad that would be and how bad it would be for decades.

It seems that the right wing talking points add up to that some Democrats like Chris Dodd were acting like Republicans and giving sweetheart deals to Wall Street fat cats. I agree, there were to many Democrats acting like Republicans and not looking out for average folks who go to work every morning. This crisis points to the fact that we need to stop these Wall Street tycoons from buying influence and favor in our government. We need real campaign finance reform!

Finally, the right wing notion that some how this crisis is due to too much government oversight is Alice in Wonderland fantasy. We have been on a thirty year anti-regulation binge. This is especially true during the last eight years. The chickens are now coming home on this failed philosophy.

Last night I had to listen to a silly friend of mine talking about how he wished it had collapsed because it would have been "fun to watch". You have no idea how many stupid arts-educated morons there are here in New York.

I worry about these crises not only for the potential damage from the crisis itself, but from the political aftermath. These complicated, poorly-understood financial situations are the perfect fodder for extremist demagogues to use to justify frightening political changes. As DBQ mentions, the takeover of these financial organizations by the Federal government makes me queasy.

"I agree, there were to many Democrats acting like Republicans and not looking out for average folks who go to work every morning."

This is the kind of ill-informed demagoguery that I refer to in my previous comment. Be very afraid when politicians get interested in the "average folks", as this is nothing more than a smokescreen being raised.

I like the notion that only "average folks" "go to work every morning" and therefore are the only valid members of our economy to "look out for". Very folksy notion.

"This crisis points to the fact that we need to stop these Wall Street tycoons from buying influence and favor in our government. We need real campaign finance reform!"

Why don't you talk to your Messiah about that? I hear he was awfully friendly with some people named Fannie and Freddie.

"We have been on a thirty year anti-regulation binge. This is especially true during the last eight years."

I agree that private entities coming under the effective control of the Federal Government, while probably necessary given the current crisis, is not a good thing. This is why more responsible long term focused people on Wall Street were aghast over the past many years by the lack of government oversight which invariably led to a casino culture in our financial markets. I am afraid that we have a lot of heavy lifting to do now to clean this mess up.

The idea that "de-regulation" led to this mess is absurd but I guess if you repeat something often enough it becomes easy to believe. Investment banks were some of the most *heavily* regulated entities out there, though no one would argue that they were "well-regulated".

The problem with government regulation of something like the financial is that the regulatees are inevitably smarter and work harder than the regulators. I don't know you solve that. Does anyone really believe Chuck Schumer and Chris Dodd can pass rules that the smart guys on Wall St won't subvert?

Do you have anything more that right wing talking points and invectives to toss around?

It is the average people who go to work each morning who usually get the most hurt in these situations. The people who created this mess are walking with their ten million dollar bonuses intact. Given your above posts, they are also walking with your sympathies!

Finally, the right wing notion that some how this crisis is due to too much government oversight is Alice in Wonderland fantasy

I don't know where you get the idea that this is a right wing notion. 90% of all financial advisors and economists are conservatives and have been shouting from the roof tops for the last 10 years at least about the relaxing of regulation and about those regulations that are counter intuitive economically.

CRA: forcing Banks to make bad loans to people and in areas that they knew were going to become sour loans.

Erosion of Glass-Stegall act ....via wikipedia "The Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 established the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) in the United States and included banking reforms, some of which were designed to control speculation. Some provisions such as Regulation Q that allowed the Federal Reserve to regulate interest rates in savings accounts were repealed by the Depository Institutions Deregulation and Monetary Control Act of 1980. Provisions that prohibit a bank holding company from owning other financial companies were repealed on November 12, 1999 by the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act signed by President Bill Clinton."

Note that both of these relaxing of regulations by Carter in 80 and Clinton in 99 were under the Democrats rule. The irresponsible actions and lack of oversight by the House Banking Committee currently under the Democrat control of Barney Frank has directly contributed to this mess. The Democrats in Congress have been playing partisan games with your money and financial security. When McCain and Gephart tried to get Congress to put some reigns on FMAC and FNMAe, they were turned away.

If you were lucky you had a financial advisor who was paying attention and steered you around the biggest rocks in the road. :-) The fundamental economy is still working. Bit, this isn't over. Now that there is "some" stability in the financial markets the worst (world wide collapse of capital markets) has been averted.

The next huge catastrophe, will be if Obama actually gets into office and enacts his asinine tax plan that is guaranteed guaranteed to spin us into a deep deep recession by killing jobs, driving businesses out of business or offshore. Hold on to your knickers. I'm retiring from financial advising after 20 years if he becomes President. I just can't take the stress.

Yes Dust Bunny Queen the last time you threatened to retire (1992) things turned out just terrible! Bill Clinton brought back sensible tax policies and balanced the federal budget and we experienced solid economic growth. Compare that to the past eight years!

Yes Dust Bunny Queen the last time you threatened to retire (1992) things turned out just terrible! Bill Clinton brought back sensible tax policies and balanced the federal budget and we experienced solid economic growth. Compare that to the past eight years!

Lee. You are a complete economic retard, and probably in other areas as well. I turn away prospective clients like you all the time. Too stupid to help.

George Bush and the Republican congress gave a HUGH tax cut to these Wall Street Wastrels and they were so grateful that they decided to repay us by robbing us blind. "Thank you George Bush. Can we have another one?" -DBQ and Palladian

CRA: forcing Banks to make bad loans to people and in areas that they knew were going to become sour loans.

Please, prohibiting redlining and the CRA did not force any bank to lend money to anyone with bad credit. This is a completely dishonest right wing talking point that tries to blame poor people for the greed and avarice of those who created MBS and lent money to people who they didn't even bother to verify incomes of.

Please, prohibiting redlining and the CRA did not force any bank to lend money to anyone with bad credit. This is a completely dishonest right wing talking point

Wanna fucking bet? I was a commercial lender for 8 years before I became a financial advisor 20 years ago. We were forced to loan bank money to people and in areas that we knew would not be good loans. Even though I knew that the credit quality was bad, the collateral was bad, the repayment sources were non existant or shakey at best, I was forced to make certain loans so the Bank could maintain its CRA record.

Don't tell me that it didn't happen. I DID IT against everything I knew about responsible lending.

I agree, there were to many Democrats acting like Republicans and not looking out for average folks who go to work every morning.

It's not often that you'll see someone confess this openly to being the prisoner of his preconceptions. With that many Democrats acting that way for so long, most of us have no trouble realizing that "acting like Republicans" is not an accurate description of it.

Clinton did not balance the budget through sound fiscal management. That is a big lie. Clinton balanced the budget through voodoo accounting. One example; he looted the Social Security Trust Fund, put the monies into the general revenue fund and pumped it up. Billions of SSS dollars never to be seen again. How could he do this? LBJ got his Democrat Congress to pass a law claiming that SSS money could be used any way the government saw fit.

Next time some one tells you the lie about the SSS entitlement explosion coming, you know where to lay the blame.

Please, prohibiting redlining and the CRA did not force any bank to lend money to anyone with bad credit. This is a completely dishonest right wing talking point that tries to blame poor people for the greed and avarice of those who created MBS and lent money to people who they didn't even bother to verify incomes of.

Oh, please. Loaning money to anyone, rich or poor whose credit is bad, who do not have the income to keep up payments, or worse- loaning money in areas where there is no economic viability is a dumb idea. It is irresponsible. Home ownership is not some God given right. It is not the phony American dream. You have to actually be able to pay for the home, its upkeep, and the utilities and all the other costs associated with ownership. If you cannot, then you rent; until you can.

About ten or twelve years ago in Chicago you could go through whole neighborhoods and see boarded up homes that were confiscated by HUD due to those loans to people in so called red lined communities. All those homes were purchased by people who should never have been allowed to buy a home.

Someone said on another post that the only loan qualification was a pulse and they were right. You want blame? I will tell one major lobbying group to blame; the National Association of Realtors who kept lobbying to find ways to artificially keep their market inflated. How high is up? As high as the NAR says it is.

It seems that the right wing talking points add up to that some Democrats like Chris Dodd were acting like Republicans and giving sweetheart deals to Wall Street fat cats.

No, no, that's pretty much how Democrats act. Fannie and Freddie were created by Democrats and have been Democrat playthings ever since. Bush proposed greater oversight in 2003 and McCain in 2005. It was Democrats that killed the reform measures.

All that BS about looking out for the common man is just telling the rubes what they want to hear. There's a reason the Kennedys and the Buffets and the Gates of the world are Democrats.

My losses are no longer character building. They are in the Willy Loman realm, and I am starting to have dark doubts about the benign nature of American capitalism.....An awful lot of modern life, and not just finance, is based on a Ponzi scheme. If, as sometimes happens, you have an asthma attack and join fifty other acute asthmatics in the ER, you have a good chance of not being intubated in time. If most investors think that the market will go belly up, the market will go belly up. The most fundamental of fundamentals is that people have to believe in the worth of their currency, the liquidity of their bank and money market deposits, and the viability of the markets. If these basic beliefs are violated, then no one wishes to be the last man out of a pyramid scheme... The wise men are going to knock heads together this week-end and re-engineer the American economy. What could possibly go wrong?......Over the past two hundred years, particularly in the anglosphere, capitalism has drastically improved life on earth. There have been frequent panics and crises but in my lifetime they have occurred with less frequency and severity. Still, there's always that last sabre toothed tiger in the woods.

Warren Buffet (who I don't think is a Democrat) has been critical of the modern Republican Party's "supply-side" approach on economic issues because he saw that it would lead to this crisis. He was right. It is now threatening to undermine confidence in the whole system. Buffet has been a responsible capitalist.

Lets face it supply side economics has ruled now for thirty years in this country. The past eight years we have had a Republican President. Twelve of the past fourteen years we have had a Republican Congress. The problem is pretty obvious.

Lets face it supply side economics has ruled now for thirty years in this country. The past eight years we have had a Republican President. Twelve of the past fourteen years we have had a Republican Congress. The problem is pretty obvious.

Let's face the fact that in the past 68 years, Western European democracies have had socialist democratic systems.

In those years, they have faced massive unemployment, are a shadow of their 19th century selves in terms of innovation and invention, and after trying to nationalise several key industries such as Mitterand in France, they turned immediately to supply-side economics to save them.

People who wish for a flawless economic system, who will not have any rocky times, wish for pie in the sky which doesn't exist.

Wanna fucking bet? I was a commercial lender for 8 years before I became a financial advisor 20 years ago.

Well gee DBQ, the crisis is not caused by 28 year old commercial or even residential loans but the exotic loans and securities that popped up between 2001 and 2007, driving up real estate values based on nothing but flipping and speculation and the ridiculous belief that real estate (especially residential real estate) would continue to appreciate at 20% a year.

You are simply lying, and a fucking racist, to blame the current debacle on loans to poor minorities.

In those years, they have faced massive unemployment, are a shadow of their 19th century selves in terms of innovation and invention

They are a shadow of themselves because they bankrupted themselves, and killed a good portion of their own populations, fighting two massively destructive wars that were a direct result of the economic system that existed before the first one.

I would rather have a social democratic system that keeps its people fed and healthy than an almost pure capitalism that launches deadly wars that kill the cream of its youth and bankrupt it completely.

"Any member of Congress who looks at the plan to give Hank unchecked power to transfer $700 billion from the Treasury to his friends' companies and has any reaction other than "You've got to be fucking kidding me" does not deserve to hold office."

Congress is going to trust Bush again? With a $700 billion blank check? Have we learned nothing the last 8 years?

"A $700 billion expenditure on distressed mortgage-related assets would be roughly what the country has spent so far in direct costs on the Iraq war and more than the Pentagon’s total yearly budget appropriation. Divided across the population, it would amount to more than $2,000 for every man, woman and child in the United States."

- Today's NYT story.

This money comes with no strings attached, no executive pay compensation, no oversight.

It's Bush/Cheney once again saying to Congress "Just give us you authority and we'll fix it." This time with a massive blank check.

Expect Republican cronies and supporters to be very well taken care of.

You are simply lying, and a fucking racist, to blame the current debacle on loans to poor minorities.

It is not "fucking racist" to refuse loans to people who do not qualify for them; either through lack of income or bad or no credit. It is fiscally responsible to do that. Only a total cretin would think otherwise.

I would rather have a social democratic system that keeps its people fed and healthy than an almost pure capitalism that launches deadly wars that kill the cream of its youth and bankrupt it completely.

Then move to one of those bankrupted nations. Don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.

It is not "fucking racist" to refuse loans to people who do not qualify for them; either through lack of income or bad or no credit. It is fiscally responsible to do that. Only a total cretin would think otherwise.

No, but it is fucking racist to claim that the current financial debacle is caused because poor responsible banks were forced by the evil irresponsible government to give money to a bunch of lazy shiftless minorities who were then responsible for bringing down the entire financial system of the United States.

What about the credit rating agencies who gave these MBS AAA ratings? How about the brokers who didn't even bother to verify income?

The time line doesn't even make sense. Pass the CRA, more than twenty years later it causes a massive bubble in residential real estate. If DBQ has a license to offer financial advice, it should be revoked.

For the right wingers who think they can blame this debacle on encouraging home ownership for the average working families they should consider the G.I Bill which was pasted in 1944. An important provision of the G.I. Bill was low interest, zero down payment home loans for servicemen. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gi_bill

What has caused this economic crisis was not having appropriate regulatory oversight and the insatiable greed on Wall Street.

To try to blame this mess on the people who are losing their homes and are the true victims of this swindle is just pathetic.

The Bush-Cheney Administration keeps demanding amnesty. What kind of people do that? People who do not follow laws.

$700 billion is $2,000 for every man, woman and child.

And they probably won't fix anything in the economy, there won't be meaningful regulation of Wall Street, the crooks will get more money. It will be the greatest wealth transfer in our nation's history.

The time line doesn't even make sense. Pass the CRA, more than twenty years later it causes a massive bubble in residential real estate. If DBQ has a license to offer financial advice, it should be revoked.

I didn't say it was THE reason you ignorant doofus. It was ONE of the reasons especially with the ever increasing governmental interference in the formerly prudent lending practices of banks forcing them to make more and more unsuitable loans in the name of diversity, political correctness or whatever happy horseshit is the latest term. Over the years the relaxation and loosening of credit quality created mortgage derivatives that contained more sub prime loans. This debacle has been at least 20 years in the making with the last 5 being the worse. When the housing market began to erode and the subprimes began defaulting, it was just a house of cards falling.

Bush and McCain along with some more intelligent Democrats tried to stop the train but they were shut down by those who were on the take from Freddie and Fannie and who were just pandering for votes from ignorant and willfully blind voters like yourself.

Was there greed? Fuck yeah, and people's heads should roll. Starting with Barney Frank and his ilk, to the sleazeball mortgage broker who slammed people into ARMs at 100% LTV and even to the people who lied and knew that they were never going to be able to make payments.

Interview in this week's Barrons with a member of that publication's roundtable, Felix Zulauf, a Swiss asset manager....

Zulauf: The leveraging-up in this cycle is reversing, and we are now deleveraging. When a huge system -- that is, the global credit system dominated by the investment-bank giants that have been the major creators of credit in the last cycle -- turns down, the fallout is going to be terrible.

So far, what we're seeing is the pain in the financial system. Later on, we'll see the echo effect of the pain in the real economy. I can't understand economists talking about no recession or mild recession. This is the worst financial crisis since the 1930s. It's different than the '30s, but is the worst since then, and the consequences will be very, very painful for virtually everybody in our economies.

So it's a global downturn?

That's right. It started out in the U.S., but it is a global event, led by the [excessive lending practices that grew up in the] housing boom in the U.S. But we also had housing booms in some of the European countries, and in some of the emerging countries. People are already talking about a glut of unsold homes in China.

How will these countries fight this severe downturn?

Governments, particularly those in the industrialized economies, will use fiscal stimuli to prop up the system and prevent them from collapsing. Usually, those stimuli are a little too small to really have a lasting impact, which is usually spent after two to three quarters. So we could have a pop in the market in '09 and the economy into 2010, and then it disappears again; then there is the next fiscal program, and so on. That can go on for a long time."

He later says about 10 years. That would put us on the timeline at about 1931.

Steve Forbes made a good point, but he is so far being ignored by the media. He says the problem is "mark to market" accounting rules and regulations combined with a weak dollar. He says recent accointing rules changes have set a trap that is now springing. The rules require posting assets to your books at market rates which under GAP requires posting most recent sale prices of these assets according to recorded sales. This sets in motion an automatic downward spiral in asset values as relentless downward asset pricing drives liquidation at ever lower valuations. This is a classic positive feedback loop feeding on itself. The solution, says Forbes, is to drop the "mark to market" rule. Sounds cheaper than buying all those assets with tax payer's dollars.

"Yeah, the right wing is rushing to blame this on efforts to improve homeownership, as if we shouldn't have done that. "

Government efforts to increase home ownership are indeed the entire foundation of this problem. How are you missing that? Its manifestations are everywhere -- the role of Fannie Mae and Freddie mac, the bubble in house prices, the implicit government guarantee on whatever paper Fannie and Freddie sell, not too mention the various tax breaks on home ownership, the FHA.

The government was hellbent on forcing people to buy houses. Here's the cost of that social consciousness.

The stupidity of the lefty trolls is beyond comprehension. Would you have preferred a complete collapse of the economy? A 1932 style depression is that what you want? I had lunch yesterday with an investment banker from a very large bank and believe me, they were terrified. They saw the Angel of Death pass over them. W has a pair the likes I never seen. He did the right thing at the right time and without hesitation. Like or hate him, the man is decisive. A real leader. Congress was an irrelevant and foolish spectator. I have no doubt the Schumer & Co. were really glad it was W in command and not Gore, never mind Obama. A lot of the democrats have substantial amounts of wealth, wealth that was about to nearly evaporate completely. They too saw the Angel of Death on the verge of bankrupting them personally. The last couple weeks will be in the history books.

What Paulson has done (and Bush is the one who is ultimately responsible and gave the go ahead, it helps having an MBA in the White house instead of a lawyer) is awe inspiring. In less than a couple of days, the government came up with and implemented a multi-hundred billion dollar deal. A deal that not only kept us from falling into the abyss, but in the long run will net the government a colossal fortune. The government bought the crap loans from the banks and by doing so cleared their books enabling them to provide the credit without with the economy collapsing.The loans were pickup at about 30% of face value. The purchase is being financed by one year T bills (that can be rolled over) at the interest rate of 0.65% The default rate would have to equal the loan value for the government to really lose money. More likely, the default rate under a very conservative estimate would not be more than 30%.At worst the government would recoup a 40% return on its investment (less carrying costs, add those in and the worst return is 35%). The more probable default rate maximum would be 15%. Add back in the vig and Uncle Sam will in all probability net back $200 billion. The alternative in not acting is incalculable.

The seeds of this cancer were planted during the Clinton Administration. The rules and policies were implemented then. I am not going rant at Clinton over this. There are no virgins in this debacle. However lets not kid ourselves who set us on this course.

If one looks at the 90's as replay of the 20's it makes the picture clearer. A period of post war (Cold War) "normalcy" (like the period after WW1), a stock market boom, a general military reduction world wide ( like the 20's) and heady sense the party would never end. The Clinton people knew that stock market was going to collapse from its bubble and their solution was to create another bubble. Real Estate. Like I said, on this I don't hate Clinton because frankly given the temper of the times, there really was no other course of action except to kick the can down the road to his successor. Lets be honest, who wants to leave a great party, where the music is sublime, the food exquisite,the woman gorgeous, the vibe fantastic and the booze top shelf? While one is in the state of joy and enjoyment, just drunk enough to be having a blast but as yet so drunk as to start puking,who wants to leave and sober up? No, in that respect I don't blame Clinton because frankly if I were in his shoes at the time and under the circumstances I would have done the same. But unfortunately very few us can walk away at the perfect moment and thus we over do it and find ourselves retching over the toilet bowel in the morning swearing we will never do it again.

And after 9/11, the great shock that occurred, who would have honestly would wanted to administer the medicine and risk a deep, deep recession? Not me. So I don't blame the Bush Administration either. What makes the difference is when the moment of truth arrived, Bush did not flinch and acted correctly. The party is over and its time to sober up. Now if Congress and any sense and some guts, it would make the tax cuts permanent and kill the death tax. The quicker the better and the more confidence the shell shocked investors will have to take risks again. Obama's tax scheme right now will be fatal for the country. You can b.s yourselves all you want about tax cuts for the people and only raising taxes on the rich. But when the rich are less rich, they cut back on spending. Small business will have to cut back their expenses. if you are one of those 75% of the workforce who are employed by small business, be realistic about which is the easiest, fastest expense reduction the boss can make: here is a hint, look in the mirror. Manicurist, personal trainers, decorators, hair stylists and so on look in the mirror: who are your customers and what happens when they have less to spend and have to cut back on non essentials? Civil servants, you live off other peoples taxes so when you are employed by the city, county or state and Obama raises taxes at the federal level on the rich, what happens to the local economy and the tax revenues you depend on for your job? So for those voting on Obama with the intention of sticking to the rich, you will enjoy your tax cut while standing in the unemployment line humming brother can you spare a dime.

Obviously - what is most scary about this - is that after 6 years of Pelosi and Reid ranting about how dumb the Bush administration is, they've punted to Bush to fix it. How does this affect the presidential candidate who is comparing McCain to Bush?

We shouldn't have done that, because the people couldn't pay the money back.

Subprime mortgages were about making a lot of money for financial operators and the financial ignorance of a lot of people who took the loans.

Only in America can you borrow hundreds of thousands of dollars, HELOC the house you bought with the money to buy cars, granite countertops, and vacations, not pay the money back, and still be a victim.

Many of you have relayed the sentiment that we've just barely averted disaster. But I don't think that's true. We've just postponed it. And probably prolonged the pain. We have a fiat currency backed by "the full faith and credit" of the government. With the government taking on all this bad debt it considerably lowers our nation's credit. I think we'll see the dollar continue to lose value and eventually become essentially worthless. It's just a matter of time. I'd start stockpiling Swiss francs and precious metals.

The problem really is that all thes financial operations have credit instruments on their books and they now don't have a good idea of the value because the rating services were asleep. Since they don't know the value, they are afraid to make any transactions that will lower their own liquidity. Drill Sgt.

Gee - Are you getting your economic lessons from Sarah Palin? If you don't know squat about finance (which you obviously don't) then better to just keep your mouth shut.

Financial operations know exactly what the value is of stuff on their books. They're not "afraid" to make transactions that will lower their own liquidity. In fact, that makes absolutely no sense at all. They CAN'T make transactions, because there is no liquidity in the market and nobody is willing to buy anymore of this stuff. So they are STUCK with these financial instruments. And as liquidity dries up, the prices keep dropping and they keep having more writeoffs. As a sidenote, Lehman Brothers did buy more of this stuff earlier this year, because they thought the price was cheap, and that is why they are now bankrupt, because they were wrong.

The problem is that counter-parties don't know how much of the financial instruments OTHER companies have on the books. They don't trust the other companies, which has increased the perception of counter-party risk. Thus nobody trades with each other without buying CDS's, and the costs of buying credit default swaps goes through the roof (this protects you if the other company goes bankrupt) and the financial industry grinds to a halt.

It's a self-fufilling prophecy, similar to a run on the banks. Company A might be doing fine, but if the clients of Company A are worried about Company A's solvency, they will stop doing business with them, thus causing Company A to suddenly NOT be doing fine.

downtownload, you're forgetting that Main Street is not Wall Street, and a financial crisis is not NECESSARILY an economic crisis. The ECONOMY be sound but the FINANCIAL sector can be in trouble just like the engine of a car can be in good working order except that it has run out of oil. That isn't NECESSARILY a problem, if you notice in time to change the oil, but if you ignore it you will destroy the engine. Similarly, the financial crisis has not yet done serious damage to the actual economy, but action needs to be taken right now to prevent such damage.

It's unsurprising that the stock market hasn't changed much, since we were at the peak of another gigantic asset bubble in the stock market around 2000. The PE ratios were over 30. They're a much more reasonable 15-ish now. Effectively the bubble got unwound by huge increases in corporate profits over the last eight years, which caused us to grow out of that asset bubble.

Lee you are beyond stupid. Actually your ignorance is awe inspiring in a biblical sense. Your entitled to your opinions but not your facts. Here is a clue: Wall Street and the financial sector are overwhelmingly democrat. Nearly as much as Hollywood. Those who are in the business and those who actually have investment portfolios know what I said to be the truth. Money isn't patriotic nor is it sentimental. What I said about Clinton is the plain truth.

Clinton isn't stupid nor were his financial people like Rubin stupid or evil. They new what they were doing and they new the risks they were taking but given the context of the times they were not wrong in putting those policies in place. They had to. They had no real choice. Money is in someways a commodity. When there are enormous pools of surplus cash, the money has to go somewhere. And that somewhere in the 90's was our stock market. No one was bitching when there portfolios were booming. But lets get real here, all the foreign money came here for a simple reason. Not because we were or are loved. Most of the cash is,was held by those who loath us. But they had no other place to go. And when the stock market bubble could not be maintained a new bubble had to be created; real estate. Did you moan and complain when your property values were increasing? Somehow I doubt that as well. Just as the real estate bubble burst a new bubble had to be created: commodities. Why do you think oil was up so high even after accounting for increased world demand? Oceans of cash needing a place to be invested.

There staggering sums of money abroad that have to be invested somewhere. And for the holders and managers of those funds so far, and be damn grateful for it, no matter how hard they try to invest elsewhere, after they invest in every other continent and country every last pound, euro, yen, dinar, rmb, peso and dollars they feel the least bit comfortable risking in, that still leaves a staggering amount of money with no where else to go except here. This is why we have these boom/bust cycles. This why schmucks like you don't pay 20% plus VAT taxes and income taxes that really bite at the equivalent to 40k a year level and property taxes and suffer a near permanent 10% permanent unemployment rate and a much higher cost of living. Its the reason nearly 50% of our population doesn't pay any meaningful amount of income tax and by comparison a paltry sales tax and retirement tax. There are no unmixed blessings. But better to have too much cash looking for a home in the USA than not enough and not having enough to float our boat. Without that cash you could abolish the Defense Department and still not be able to finance the government at the current social spending rate.

Pray the foreigners still keep pumping money here. The day that stops, the entire entitlement schemes come to halt. Social security and medicare? Expect substantial benefit cuts. Not less than planed for increases, but rollbacks to the level of quite few years earlier and capped at those levels. And you will be grateful that you'll be able to get even that. Welfare? Half the programs will be abolished and the rest will be seriously curtailed. Government employee pension plans? Expect a huge hair cut and forget about retiring after 20 years and start collecting the day after. You maybe vested but you can bet you behind the payments will be deferred until you reach Social Security retirement age. And salaries will be cut as well. Farm subsidies, mostly gone.

Like I said, I don't blame Clinton. he is a politician and all politicians have a shorter time horizon than investors. Had it not been for 9/11 the scheme might have worked. We all loved our booming portfolios and we loved it when our homes went up in price. Were you the Casandra warning the people during these bubbles? Somehow I don't think so. So lets go ahead and put ridiculously tough controls and regulations and drive the foreign money out. Lets tax our own investor class in to oblivion. No doubt you will feel and be ever so virtuous when the whole country joins the permanently humbled and hobbled class. I suppose misery loves company.

DTL, what your looking for is credit insurance. There aren't too many players and AIG was the bookies bookie. That is why they had to saved. Mark to market is nothing more than valuing your inventory at the current value and not what you paid for it. Great when values go up and you can value your inventory at the new replacement costs ( appreciated assets values allow for increased loan activity). Like I said before, money is a commodity. Just like apparel. If Nordstrom's or Macy's had to over night revalue (mark to market) their inventory downwards to the extent the banks and financial companies did, they too would be insolvent. No matter the product, inventory that doesn't move always loses value. And no one would ship them unless they could get a credit guarantee on the receivables. So without some form of credit (no AIG,no reinsurance for the credit insurers among others) insurance, a lot of what the banks held became shaky and once they were forced to mark to market that paper (loans and counter trades) lost its credit worthiness, essentially they became insolvent. They no longer had the ratios to lend. If Bush didn't clear the bank's slate and stabilize the credit reinsurance market as well, we would be heading in to a depression next week.

Sam you can rail all you want about fiat currency, but FDR abolished gold backed securities and contracts as well as gold reserve dollars. And that is never coming back if for no other reason that there simply isn't enough gold metal in the world to back up the dollar at the current GDP level and volume of dollars outstanding at a fixed price that won't completely ruin its value. Forget it. It ain't never going to happen and if some basket of precious metals could be concocted to substitute for the gold standard and act as a currency board, that would be even worse that what we have now. It would be back to the 19th century, massive booms followed by massive panics. We don't need to reinvent that wheel.

Dust Bunny Queen and Victoria, thank you for your kind comments. Victoria when next in Miami remember La Caretta on SW 8th st and 37th Ave. Have a cortadito made with evaporated milk, but the ones made on the outside coffee window. Nectar of the Gods.

I don't pretend to have near the familiarity with the financial mumbo jumbo others on this thread are fluent in, but it is pretty scary when you realize how our economic security rests upon paper money that politicians and bankers are constantly dickering with and inflating. They can't be up to any good. House of cards indeed.

There's been talk upthread about how home ownership is not a right, and how government policies promoting it have been misguided. Well, yeah, nobody has a right to have somebody else build a house for him. He's got to pay for that. But here's a radical truth -- every person born into this world has an equal right to the underlying earth, even if other people got there first and fenced it all off. You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one. Read Thomas Paine's essay on Agrarian Justice, spelled out in terms that even the experts can understand. Simple as pie. Maybe more people could afford their mortgages if this self-evident truth was recognized.

Recognize this truth, conform tax "policy" to it, and let the invisible hand take care of the rest. Get rid of the Fed. Totally deregulate banking. Let people use whatever currencies they want. Let the cards fall where they may. Buyer beware. The government has been no good for the economy since the days when kings skimmed the gold off coins passing through their treasury while chopping the heads off of private citizens who dared to do the same damn thing.

Do I know what I'm talking about? Maybe not. But I see know reason to trust our fates to bankers and financial experts just because they speak an unintelligible language. Even people knowledgeable in the field admit the whole damn thing is a giant ponzi-scheme. Seems about right to me.

---They are a shadow of themselves because they bankrupted themselves, and killed a good portion of their own populations, fighting two massively destructive wars that were a direct result of the economic system that existed before the first one.

I would rather have a social democratic system that keeps its people fed and healthy than an almost pure capitalism that launches deadly wars that kill the cream of its youth and bankrupt it completely.--

Nice fantasy narrative, but the fuehrer in Germany, who is often credited with beginning the second world war was a socialist (national socialist). His ally in Russia was a socialist/communist and his other ally in Italy was a renown and respected socialist.

It is the unstable, inhuman ideology of socialism that brings about death and wars (

As for the idiotic joke that Socialism keeps its people fed, please review

North Korea, North Koreans are dying because of food shortages in rural areas, and a massive famine is just a matter of time, a South Korean aid group said Friday.

Robert Mugabe once was hailed as a symbol of the new Africa, but under his rule the health and well-being of his people have dropped dramatically, which is as much an abuse of human rights as arbitrary arrest and torture. According to the World Health Organization, Zimbabwe has the world’s shortest life expectancy—37 years for men and 34 for women.

And lest you think that the European socialists have really kept their people healthy, consider that all the European countries are dying off at the national level...

Europe's working-age population is shrinking as fertility rates decline. In a fit of gloom, one German minister recently warned of the country "turning the light out" if its birth rate did not pick up.

Thanks for another blovating post. But you did not really address what I wrote.

"Bill Clinton has not been president for eight years now. Even then he could not sign into law anything a Republican Congress did not put on his table during the last six years of his presidency.

Now you are celebrating the fact that the Bush administration and the federal government has taken over a good portion of our economy. What kind of conservative are you? Talk about grasping at straws!"

The Bush administration has been asleep at the wheel for the last eight years and now the federal government owns a good portion of the economy. You as a conservative must really love the precedent that sets!

1-the policies and legislation that lead to this sub prime mess were put in place by the Clinton Administration and have not been revoke by congress since then. You have heard of Congress?2-Many of the players who are directly involved in this mess are former Clinton Administration officials. 3-The senate effectively changed hands during the the 2000 election. In 2001 a RINO Republican switched parties effectively splitting the Senate equally and the House was a razor thin Republican majority so there was no ability as you fantasize for a complete Republican control of Congress. In addition the Democrats have been the majority party for the last two years. What where they doing for that time besides bullshitting? They have oversight authority so what exactly have they been overseeing?

So therefore instead of solely laying this at the feet of the Bush Administration as you are so dishonestly trying to do so and see the facts as they are, you simply prove once again that only a liberal can believe what you are stating since no ordinary person could be such a fool.

Thank you for not blovating this time around. You write "You have heard of Congress?" Yes, and the Republicans were the majority party from 1995-2007. You then state "In 2001 a RINO Republican switched parties effectively splitting the Senate equally and the House was a razor thin Republican majority so there was no ability as you fantasize for a complete Republican control of Congress." Well this same Republican congress did pass misguided tax cuts for the super wealthy and other bad laws. You can't have it both ways. Why won't Republicans practice that "personal responsibility" they are always preaching to others?

Bush has been president for the past eight years and he has had a Republican congress for most of it and the country is now on the ropes. Enough said. Kick the bums out!